![]() Likened to American shows like Hill Street Blues and Moonlighting, shot on 16mm film rather than video tape and boasting high concept episodes and two part story arcs with big consequences, the show felt more like event TV than throwaway children’s entertainment, thanks in no small part, to the writing. It’s the first time they fell in love, the first time they got something wrong and had to apologise, the first success they ever had that was all their own, all those things, those are the things that a 12-year-old craves.” ![]() So I always called Press Gang the adventures of some young people who are being adults for the very first time in their lives. ![]() That’s literally how they’re wired – to become one. They’re not really interested in how to be a child and they’re very irritated if that’s the way you treat them. “The thing that children are most interested in is how to be an adult. “This is true of children, always:” Moffat begins, with absolute clarity. It was Moffat’s experience as a teacher that helped give him that focused understanding of what kids wanted to watch. For me there’s never been a clearer example of ‘if you can see it, you can be it,’ though at the time I just thought it was a really cool show. The show introduced me to the thrill of a newsroom run by people like me, it showed me an environment where all the senior members of staff on the paper – the editor, the lead designer, the head writer, and even the intern – were girls and no one even mentioned it, and it told me that actually, working really hard can be fun. When the first episode of Press Gang aired it was exactly one week after my 11th birthday. For many members of a certain generation Press Gang was a landmark, even if we didn’t know it at the time. The thing about Press Gang is that it always was incredibly grown up in a way that was instantly recognisable to youngsters. I just thought ‘Why am I still stuck in children’s television? I should be doing something really grown up’…like, as it turns out, Doctor Who” “I was emailing back and forth with Julia when BritBox started just saying, ‘God if we’d known!’” he laughs. Now more than 30 years after the first episode aired, season one of Press Gang has arrived on BritBox – it’s a jewel from a different era but revisiting it now, rather than dated, it seems incredibly progressive. We thought it was our entitlement the way the young do.” You’d always make a great show, you’d always have fantastic reviews, you’d always get to do what the hell you like, and people would applaud you. We thought everything we ever did would be like this. ![]() “And with the exception of Dexter really, we were all doing our first big jobs. “We were all very young,” Moffat reflects, chatting via Zoom on lockdown from a room lined with bookshelves. It won multiple awards, launched the career of its lead Julia Sawalha, turned Dexter Fletcher – now an extremely accomplished director – into a teenage heartthrob and gave Moffat the space to flex his writing muscles beginning a career which would see him create numerous iconic sitcoms, reinvent Sherlock and Dracula and guide Doctor Who though a modern glory age. Press Gang was an idea his father Bill Moffat, a headmaster, had pitched to a producer who was visiting his school while filming an episode of Highway, and when a script was requested, Bill suggested Steven write it. The fact is, Steven Moffat was something of a youth himself at 25 years old when he landed his very first television writing gig. “A voice for today’s youth” runs the strap line to the Junior Gazette, the fictional newspaper at the heart of Press Gang, a kids’ show first broadcast on ITV in 1989 which followed a team of school children turned budding journalists. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |